Astronomy Buff

What Do Meteor Showers Sound Like?

by Tony on August 11th, 2007

Oh sure, we can all go outside this weekend and look at the Perseid meteor shower, but how many take the time to listen to them?

Here’s a cool recording of a Leonid meteor shower over Australia in November 2000:

Each time a meteor crosses the atmosphere, it leaves behind a short trail of ionised particles. This trail reflects high-frequency radio signals from stations around the world for just a few seconds. The motion of the meteor trail due to the upper atmosphere winds changes the frequency of the reflected signal (Doppler effect). You ‘hear’ the trail as it is blown around by the winds before it is eventually dispersed.

I know, after a few minutes of that you want to stick a fork in your head, but I find this is an interesting way to enjoy meteor showers. I didn’t realize they were reflecting high frequency radio waves as they burned up.

After reading this article (subscription required), I fell in love with the idea of installing microphones on space probes and listening to what they record. Acoustic data may provide us with insights that we never expected, it’s certainly worth trying:

In fact, the sounds of the entire solar system are woefully unexplored. “I compare it to the stage that space imaging was at 30 or 40 years ago - people didn’t think they needed to fly cameras,” says Greg Delory, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. “The concept for early space probes was that we needed detailed physics measurements of things like temperature and pressure. What’s the use of a picture?” (Full article)

I can see a whole new field of study opening up: acoustic astronomy.

Since I know you’ll all be out this Sunday night watching the Perseid shower in the wee hours, think about this sound file and imagine what all those little bits of space debris sound like as they burn up in our atmosphere.

Sound File Credit: ESA

Technorati Tags: acoustic astronomy, perseid meteor shower, sounds of space

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POSTED IN: observing the night sky